There are several ethics questions the involve choosing to save 1 person vs 10 people. The classic is a train hurtling down the tracks towards 10 people, who are unable to escape. You can divert the train onto another set of tracks, but this set has 1 person on it, who is also unable to escape.
Such questions are sometimes hard to answer, but most people come to some sort of rationalisation; after all, we are dealing with other people.
So the other day, I came across a much more uncomfortable question; one which I have had trouble answering, and I'm not even sure if any answer I come up with is really honest.
The question is: if you had to choose for either 10 random people in the world to die, or yourself to die, which would you choose?
Or perhaps an even harder one; where you have the choice between 1 (or 2) random people, and yourself.
Are our own lives worth as much as 10 people? How would you answer the question?
Such questions are sometimes hard to answer, but most people come to some sort of rationalisation; after all, we are dealing with other people.
So the other day, I came across a much more uncomfortable question; one which I have had trouble answering, and I'm not even sure if any answer I come up with is really honest.
The question is: if you had to choose for either 10 random people in the world to die, or yourself to die, which would you choose?
Or perhaps an even harder one; where you have the choice between 1 (or 2) random people, and yourself.
Are our own lives worth as much as 10 people? How would you answer the question?
